A FREE 128k MP3!

Boccherini

Piano Quintets 

Download it now - for one week only - it's only free from our Cover Page!

OR PURCHASE "UPGRADE" to full quality 320k MP3, lossless 16-bit or 24-bit FLAC downloads (where available), download free covers and cue sheets, scores and notes here:

PACM 015 - Boccherini  

Producer Andrew Rose continues his fine remastering of Mercury label originals with American music inscribed 1953-1955 by Howard Hanson (1896-1981).  Two works of equal length and equal musical import brace the hazily "impressionistic" materials by Charles Tomlinson Griffes (1884-1920). The massive Third Symphony of Roy Harris (1939) has become a kind of quintessential American concert work, moving from lyrical tragedy to a more dramatically tragic effect that ends on a G Minor chord. Shaped in one movement in the manner of the Sibelius Seventh Symphony, the Harris piece divides into five sections that occasionally assume canonical development. Energetic exchanges in the woodwinds, tympani solo, and plucked strings offer challenges to Hanson's sense of orchestral balance and texture that engage our attention. In its tender moments, the Harris symphony achieves a nobility of expression that feels authentic and richly dramatic.

The music of Griffes that receives regular attention, his Roman Sketches and Fantasy Pictures, were conceived between 1910-1915. Griffes found the poetry of William Sharp (his Sospiri di Roma, "Sighs of Rome") to his taste, and Griffes sought to fill out Sharp's intentions more fully in Walter Pater's sense that "all art aspires to the condition of music." Legend has it that Griffes saw a white peacock in the Berlin zoo, and he consequently collected pictures of them. The poem by Sharp (aka Fiona McLeod) calls forth a white peacock "Deep in the heart of a sea of white violets." A sensuous melody "fans out" in arpeggios to imitate the male of the species' spreading his proverbial tail.

Cumulus clouds provide the subject matter for Op. 7, No. 4, a colorful evocation in mixed tonalities that contrasts with Debussy's "study in gray," Nuages. The Eastman-Rochester harp and flute conspire with the strings to evoke sensuous tissue in space, as though Mallarme had cast his spell in America. The harmonies, by the way, move between Ravel and Ives. The first of the Griffes works, The Pleasure Dome of Kubla Khan (1912; orch. 1916) takes the Coleridge poem quite literally, moving in "mazy motions" and invoking a "woman wailing for her demon lover." The sacred river of Imagination, Alph, having given birth to itself, cedes its power to a soft finale, perhaps dreaming of Mount Abora. The world premier of the piece occurred in Boston under Pierre Monteux. Hanson invokes its veiled eruptive beauty in virile tones. The Bacchanale from Fantasy Pictures might owe a small debt to Saint-Saens, but the musical means come closer to Respighi as cross-fertilized by Debussy and Richard Strauss. The Eastman battery enjoys a brisk workout, as does the brass. A bit of oriental color ingratiates itself into the final fanfares, the coda sudden and decisive.

Barber composed his Symphony in One Movement in 1936 and revised it c. 1947. At the time, only the Sibelius Seventh might have served as his model, a single movement that synthesizes the traditional four-movement structure that derives its contours from the three themes of the opening movement. Diminished, the first theme provides the basis of the Scherzo, Allegro molto. The second theme Barber lengthens, the oboe and harp over muted strings, to form the Andante tranquillo. The music crescendos to the Con moto finale, a condensed passacaglia on the first theme in low strings that absorbs themes from latter movements and closes in a rather cyclic recapitulation of the symphony as a whole. Hanson provides both urgency and virile might to the outer sections, but no less a refined, virtuoso delicacy to the buzzing and busy figures of the Scherzo. The winds, brass, harp, and tympani operate at high frequency, virtuosic, often in feathery textures. Hanson's innate romanticism finds an admirable vehicle in the Barber third movement, which demands hearings more often.
.       

LINK 

These two concerto performances make contrasting claims on the listener. Ida Haendel's 1947 recording of the Violin Concerto was made in Kingsway Hall, accompanied by the pick-up National Symphony Orchestra under Karl Rankl. This was composed of first-rate musicians, but they didn't always form a first rate orchestra. There are moments of rhythmic uncertainty, and a slight feeling of under-engagement from time to time which, whilst hardly an impediment to the soloist, means that the recording as a whole is slightly less impressive than it might have been. Haendel's tone is quite fervent, but it's well controlled, and never seems out of scale - albeit her vibrato has a tendency to seem a touch fast on occasion. Her phrasing is eloquent, maybe a touch unidiomatic at a few paragraphal points, but her playing of the finale's folk incidents, and associated crisp chording, is a pleasure to hear. Dutton issued this recording well over a decade ago, as part of an all-Haendel disc - the Tchaikovsky with Basil Cameron was the other main work. The transfers represent the divergent aesthetics of these two labels - a somewhat dampened treble from Dutton, a more expansive top to bottom range from Pristine.
 
I know two of Mainardi's other performances of the Concerto. I've reviewed the live one with Jochum on Tahra 638-39; then there's the wartime inscription with van Kempen and the Staatskapelle Berlin, on 78s. On neither of these occasions has he ever much impressed. He always started with a sluggish, wan, almost sullen first entry, and things progressed from there. It may chart some kind of emotive development for him, but it rather flies in the face of the composer's express markings He never had an especially beautiful tone but he was always a tactful player, even if he is raspily-toned here in places and his downward scale is ponderous. In fact Lehmann and the orchestra prove to be luxury casting - outstanding winds, commanding bass line - and rather upstage the dogged soloist. It's telling that one listens to little rhythmic emphases from Lehmann and to the contributions from the orchestra's principals with as much interest as one does to the soloist. I do admire Mainardi - just not in this work.
 
Coupling historical performances like this makes some sense, but to saddle a good performance of the Violin Concerto with a rather (soloistically) nondescript one of the companion work will cause problems for potential purchasers.   

LINK